"Ken Jacobs began annotating a lyrical junkyard allegory with chunks of found footage in the late â??50s; screened in various versions over the decades, Star Spangled to Death became his life's work. Incorporating audiovisual material ranging from political campaign films to animated cartoons to children's phonograph records, featuring Al Jolson, Mickey Mouse, the young Jack Smith, and a half-dozen American presidents, this vast, ironic pageant of 20th-century American history is a unique and mind-boggling contraption, the ultimate underground movie.â?